Hate to burst your bubble, but everything in existence is "natural". That is, it exists in nature. The only thing that is not "natural":

Religion.

That's right. The most toxic radioactive sludge in existence is every bit as "natural" as rabbit poop. Why? Because it is a byproduct of a living organism or a group of organisms. It is made of elements found in nature, and undergoes natural processes.

Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers are made from flour, oil, milk, and salt, and not much else. The cheddar variety is "baked with real cheese" and contains no artificial preservatives. But are these crucian crackers really "natural," as the package claims? Or are they fishy Frankenfoods?

So any food that involves combining 2 or more ingredients becomes an unnatural abomination?

HAMMERTOE:Hate to burst your bubble, but everything in existence is "natural". That is, it exists in nature. The only thing that is not "natural":

Religion.

That's right. The most toxic radioactive sludge in existence is every bit as "natural" as rabbit poop. Why? Because it is a byproduct of a living organism or a group of organisms. It is made of elements found in nature, and undergoes natural processes.

Here's how I think about it: If I can walk out into a field/woods/ocean/whatever, and pick up a *blank* then it is natural. If I have to take it back to a lab and process it, it's not natural. You could argue finer points, but when it comes to things I eat or put on my body, I'm perfectly fine using the idea generally.

Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

Here's how I think about it: If I can walk out into a field/woods/ocean/whatever, and pick up a *blank* then it is natural. If I have to take it back to a lab and process it, it's not natural. You could argue finer points, but when it comes to things I eat or put on my body, I'm perfectly fine using the idea generally.

HAMMERTOE:Hate to burst your bubble, but everything in existence is "natural". That is, it exists in nature. The only thing that is not "natural":

Religion.

That's right. The most toxic radioactive sludge in existence is every bit as "natural" as rabbit poop. Why? Because it is a byproduct of a living organism or a group of organisms. It is made of elements found in nature, and undergoes natural processes.

That's only the definition pedantic assholes try to claim for the word natural, same thing they do with the word organic. Everyone else has a different expectation when they see those words.

Porous Horace:There are elements that have been created by nuclear scientists.They can be called 'not natural'.The 'not natural' list is pretty short and yes, Virginia, Trump's hair is on that list.

You know, those elements ARE thought to occur naturally. The problem is that these unstable nuclei tend to break apart so quickly after they're created, that scientists have been forced to recreate them. All nuclei are just clumps of protons and neutrons with a good bunch of electrons orbiting them. If you have any large amount of free neutrons and protons, any nucleic composition can be achieved. However, most of the combinations are about as durable as the promises of a politician during election year.

The whole "natural" thing? Yeah, that one's gonna be a biatch to solve. Everything's natural when you go deep enough, just like religion is a natural byproduct of our imaginations and a deep-seated need to explain the world of phenomenons that we continually experience.

WhiskeyBoy:Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

We already have more than enough food for everyone in the world, the problem isn't food production it's distribution. There is no profit in feeding people on the other side of the globe.

The proper way to eat a Goldfish cracker is similar to the technique to eat a sunflower seed. Turn the Goldfish on it's site in your mouth and crack it along the hemispherical axis into two identical pieces. Then crunch in silent pleasure

Natural and Organic (in food labeling terms, not true scientific terms) should mean the exact same thing. If a food has been sprayed with pesticides, they should be listed on the label. Bread isn't all-natural if the wheat has pesticides in it. An apple is not just an apple if it has been sprayed. It is an apple plus all of those pesticides. The label should tell you that. It is part of having a healthy intelligent informed citizenry.

manimal2878:WhiskeyBoy: Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

We already have more than enough food for everyone in the world, the problem isn't food production it's distribution. There is no profit in feeding people on the other side of the globe.

Distribution is expensive. You need to be able to grow strains of healthy foods where they are needed, not fly bags full when they are needed. GM foods developed to grow and contain vital nutrients in those regions is key. It is still (sadly) a profits game. Companies that own patents to GM foods preventing their global free distribution to help diminish world hunger over profit margins are just as bad as people who wouldn't have them distributed due to their "frankenfoodiness" or whatever.

But I digest... bread, by my consideration, isn't natural. It's a manufactured good. I think you may be making an assumption regarding my attitude towards non-natural goods. Just because something is natural doesn't mean it's healthy and just because something is unnatural doesn't mean it is unhealthy.

Most of the farks out there that raise a stink over this stuff don't care and don't know dick about science. It's as natural as coal, tree bark or squirrel split. Last time I checked I didn't see any ghost parts in the Cheetos. Also last time I checked snake venom was all natural and so is coal tar.

People need to stop buying into a repackaged form of vitalism. It was disproven over 100 years ago. It has no bearing on health and in fact I dare say it creates more risks. While people worry about the hyped up problem of "unnatural" food they ignore the simple fact that no junk food is good for you. They also ignore things like all natural rat turds.

I love going into a store and seeing info on meat being free range, organic, steroid free, etc. However no mention of how fresh the meat is, how it was packaged, how it was stored, handled, its date of production or any of that actual important info.

/I work at an airport. The biggest seller is water. people biatch about the price and still buy. There is a %100 free source of water 15 feet from that point, a water fountain. That's the power of marketing. Oh and they do give out water bottles or hey can be bought for about $1. the bottle of water is at least $2.50

SuburbanCowboy:Natural and Organic (in food labeling terms, not true scientific terms) should mean the exact same thing. If a food has been sprayed with pesticides, they should be listed on the label. Bread isn't all-natural if the wheat has pesticides in it. An apple is not just an apple if it has been sprayed. It is an apple plus all of those pesticides. The label should tell you that. It is part of having a healthy intelligent informed citizenry.

Organic (which is a dumb word as all darn near all fertilizers and pesticides contain carbon regardless of source) doesn't mean no pesticides, it means shiat for fertilizer and pesticides derived from biological toxins rather than cheimical toxins.

SuburbanCowboy:Natural and Organic (in food labeling terms, not true scientific terms) should mean the exact same thing. If a food has been sprayed with pesticides, they should be listed on the label. Bread isn't all-natural if the wheat has pesticides in it. An apple is not just an apple if it has been sprayed. It is an apple plus all of those pesticides. The label should tell you that. It is part of having a healthy intelligent informed citizenry.

What if a natural insect repellant was used? What if the plants weren't spray with pesticides but where genetically modified to be resistant? What if the plants were grown organically but preservatives were used in making the bread? What if those preservatives were derived from natural products? What about the varieties of wheat and apples which have been cultivated by humans but would not survive in nature?

It seems to me that the FDA is right to not want to get into specifically defining another emotionally-charged term. I'm fine with having these sorts of things (pesticides, GMO, etc) on the label, but even reading this thread you can see that "natural" is far to vague a term, understood by different people to mean vastly different things (probably even people within the FDA) to make it a regulated term. Will we next have them start spending their time regulating terms like "healthy", "wholesome", and "delicious" as well?

But I digest... bread, by my consideration, isn't natural. It's a manufactured good. I think you may be making an assumption regarding my attitude towards non-natural goods. Just because something is natural doesn't mean it's healthy and just because something is unnatural doesn't mean it is unhealthy.

Short answer: that was just a silly comment on 'find' vs 'create in a lab'.

Long answer: no assumptions, really. Bread is indeed manufactured, but there is a world of difference between bread made with only flour, yeast, water, etc (i.e. ingredients ostensibly found in nature) and bread made using chemicals with ten-syllable names (i.e. compounds found only in laboratories). I know wheat must be milled into flour, but work with me here,

And I wanted to make a silly comment on 'find' vs 'create in a lab' while using 'breadfruit' in a sentence.

Long answer: no assumptions, really. Bread is indeed manufactured, but there is a world of difference between bread made with only flour, yeast, water, etc (i.e. ingredients ostensibly found in nature) and bread made using chemicals with ten-syllable names (i.e. compounds found only in laboratories). I know wheat must be milled into flour, but work with me here,

And I wanted to make a silly comment on 'find' vs 'create in a lab' while using 'breadfruit' in a sentence.

I like to use "minimally processed", yea it is vague but there is no simple way to cut through ridiculously tangled knot of weasel words and nonsense terminology billions upon billions of dollars marketing dollars have infused in the collective psyche.

95% (or however much exactly) of what you can buy in a supermarket is unhealthy, especially stuff with labels on it that give the impression of being "healthy". You are pretty much confined to the fruit/veggie aisle unless the supermarket in question sells humanely raised, grass-fed meat and dairy... which is rare.

WhiskeyBoy:Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

WhiskeyBoy:Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

Genetically modified food, like nearly all technologies is an entirely neutral thing, what is good or bad is how it is used. And right now it is used, mostly (there are notable exceptions), to line rich corporation's coffers with more money. Damn the consequences to public health, the environment, sustainability, nutritional value, farmers, livestock, and whatever else removes so much as a penny from the bottom line.

For the record I don't much like the word either, as it is designed to elicit an emotional reaction to sway public opinion, when there are much, much better reasons to call into question the current use of GMOs.

But I digest... bread, by my consideration, isn't natural. It's a manufactured good. I think you may be making an assumption regarding my attitude towards non-natural goods. Just because something is natural doesn't mean it's healthy and just because something is unnatural doesn't mean it is unhealthy.

Short answer: that was just a silly comment on 'find' vs 'create in a lab'.

Long answer: no assumptions, really. Bread is indeed manufactured, but there is a world of difference between bread made with only flour, yeast, water, etc (i.e. ingredients ostensibly found in nature) and bread made using chemicals with ten-syllable names (i.e. compounds found only in laboratories). I know wheat must be milled into flour, but work with me here

2-hydroxypropane-1,2,3-tricarboxylic acid is a lot of syllables, its other "E330" name seem horrible to some, yet it's just citric acid. Everything has systematic/standardized names, that doesn't make it inherently good or bad. The "natural" denomination is naive at best, actively misleading at worst.

HAMMERTOE:Hate to burst your bubble, but everything in existence is "natural". That is, it exists in nature. The only thing that is not "natural":

Religion.

That's right. The most toxic radioactive sludge in existence is every bit as "natural" as rabbit poop. Why? Because it is a byproduct of a living organism or a group of organisms. It is made of elements found in nature, and undergoes natural processes.

Cheetos are found in nature? As in they occur naturally without being made?

2-hydroxypropane-1,2,3-tricarboxylic acid is a lot of syllables, its other "E330" name seem horrible to some, yet it's just citric acid. Everything has systematic/standardized names, that doesn't make it inherently good or bad. The "natural" denomination is naive at best, actively misleading at worst.

Read my post again, paying particular attention to (i.e. compounds found only in laboratories). Citric acid is a poor example as it is obviously found in nature.

Then consider the wide variety of compounds that are made in laboratories to be used as preservatives, texture enhancers, and other similar additives.

HAMMERTOE:Hate to burst your bubble, but everything in existence is "natural". That is, it exists in nature. The only thing that is not "natural":

Religion.

That's right. The most toxic radioactive sludge in existence is every bit as "natural" as rabbit poop. Why? Because it is a byproduct of a living organism or a group of organisms. It is made of elements found in nature, and undergoes natural processes.

FYI: Anything that is purely intangible, such as philosophy, is not natural.

How about when they make claims like "organic" or "all-natural" on food products, they have to put an asterisk next to it and have the definition they're using printed somewhere on the packaging in letters large enough for people to find and read it?

Hipsters can still feel superior to everybody else for buying their organic locavore crap, and those of us who want to actually be informed as to what's in our food can find out what they mean right there on the package.

2-hydroxypropane-1,2,3-tricarboxylic acid is a lot of syllables, its other "E330" name seem horrible to some, yet it's just citric acid. Everything has systematic/standardized names, that doesn't make it inherently good or bad. The "natural" denomination is naive at best, actively misleading at worst.

Read my post again, paying particular attention to (i.e. compounds found only in laboratories). Citric acid is a poor example as it is obviously found in nature.

Then consider the wide variety of compounds that are made in laboratories to be used as preservatives, texture enhancers, and other similar additives.

There are almost no compounds found only in laboratories (exceptions are the elements created through radioactive bombarding). Many compounds also found in nature can be synthisized in a factory as well (essentially made from the building blocks of carbon chains as the plants or animals did originally but in a different method). Those preservatives, texture enhancers etc were almost all originally isolated from something more complex (usually through a complex process). Today rather than buying a ton of eggs for a thickener, more thickener can simply be made. It's not "natural" but the chemical is the same.

SuburbanCowboy:Natural and Organic (in food labeling terms, not true scientific terms) should mean the exact same thing. If a food has been sprayed with pesticides, they should be listed on the label. Bread isn't all-natural if the wheat has pesticides in it. An apple is not just an apple if it has been sprayed. It is an apple plus all of those pesticides. The label should tell you that. It is part of having a healthy intelligent informed citizenry.

You do realize that 99.99% of pesticides are natural - as in the plants themselves produce them, right? Pesticides sprayed on a plant make up a very tiny amount of the pesticides in the food you are consuming.

willfullyobscure:WhiskeyBoy: Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

counter-troll:

Monsanto bankrupting farmers for planting seeds they grew themselves

I believe that makes us love-love. Your serve.

Monsanto is evil because of their business practices, not because of GMOs.

nelsonal:SuburbanCowboy: Natural and Organic (in food labeling terms, not true scientific terms) should mean the exact same thing. If a food has been sprayed with pesticides, they should be listed on the label. Bread isn't all-natural if the wheat has pesticides in it. An apple is not just an apple if it has been sprayed. It is an apple plus all of those pesticides. The label should tell you that. It is part of having a healthy intelligent informed citizenry.

Organic (which is a dumb word as all darn near all fertilizers and pesticides contain carbon regardless of source) doesn't mean no pesticides, it means shiat for fertilizer and pesticides derived from biological toxins rather than cheimical toxins.

Not entirely accurate. Organic just means they can only use a special list of approved pesticides which have been shown to be less potent and "safer" for human consumption. For example, sulfur can be used as a pesticide (it's probably the oldest pesticide out there; been used for thousands of years). It used to be that organic foods could only use "natural" sulfur, but it turned out that unprocessed sulfur contains arsenic, so it was changed to allow for processed sulfur to remove the arsenic.

Now here's the amusing part: because the approved pesticides are less potent, they have to use more of the chemical to produce the desired effect, which actually makes some organic farms more environmentally destructive than conventional farms (conventional is defined as farms which use normal pesticides), due to the agricultural run-off of the pesticides.

I put safer in quotes because the safety of a chemical is dependent on the dose. High potency with low doses can easily be safer than low potency with high doses. It all depends on the chemical.

2-hydroxypropane-1,2,3-tricarboxylic acid is a lot of syllables, its other "E330" name seem horrible to some, yet it's just citric acid. Everything has systematic/standardized names, that doesn't make it inherently good or bad. The "natural" denomination is naive at best, actively misleading at worst.

Read my post again, paying particular attention to (i.e. compounds found only in laboratories). Citric acid is a poor example as it is obviously found in nature.

Then consider the wide variety of compounds that are made in laboratories to be used as preservatives, texture enhancers, and other similar additives.

There are almost no compounds found only in laboratories (exceptions are the elements created through radioactive bombarding). Many compounds also found in nature can be synthisized in a factory as well (essentially made from the building blocks of carbon chains as the plants or animals did originally but in a different method). Those preservatives, texture enhancers etc were almost all originally isolated from something more complex (usually through a complex process). Today rather than buying a ton of eggs for a thickener, more thickener can simply be made. It's not "natural" but the chemical is the same.

I know people that believe the same exact chemical will have different effects depending on whether it's "natural" or made in a lab.

Hell, my brother believes that "pesticides" and other "unnatural chemicals" will stay in your body forever (as in, a biological half-life doesn't exist), and even if you take just minute amounts, say on the order of micrograms or nanograms, then it will eventually add up until it kills you 40 years down the line. To be fair, my brother barely has a high school education (he dropped out, then took his GED test years later), so I can forgive him a bit on the subject. He's not the brightest bulb in the box. His wife, however, has a masters degree in botany - she I cannot forgive. She once spent a half hour explaining how wrong I was when I incorrectly thought a plant was of a different genus than it really was (and I admittedly was wrong; she's the botanist, so she would know). But what pissed me off was how she kept saying I was wrong when we started talking about toxicants - my specialty. When I finally started pulling out journal articles and aggregate research, she hand-waved it away with, "oh, anyone can make any conclusion by manipulating statistics."

/It irks me when people use their scientific credentials to gain authority and then disregard the actual scientific research for their own batshiat crazy beliefs.